The Level of Member Participation and Rural Cooperative's Achievement in Isfahan Province

Cooperatives are entities mainly characterized by collective planning and decision-making. Their success secret lies in member's participation in management. This is even more eye-catching in rural cooperatives in view of their more dependence on their member's demands and roles. The present research, being a descriptive-inferential one, is an endeavor to examine the level of member participation and its relation to rural cooperatives of Isfahan Township in 1389 (2010) using regression analysis. The township has 26 rural cooperative societies (3 inactive thereof) which are struggling with participation crisis. They, therefore, have been included entirely as the statistical population. Data were secured from all rural cooperative managers (managing directors and board members) who mounted to 138 people as well as from 260 members who were sampled through random systematic method. Data collection tool included two types of questionnaire for members and managers. The validity of the questionnaires was established by experts and their reliability was decided by Cronbach's alpha (over 0.85) through SPSS software on a number of 30 people. Results indicate poor level of member participation in rural cooperatives. Correlation coefficient shows significant correlation between member participation and achievement which means member participation is quite determinant in the achievement of the cooperatives.